Chicago State University (CSU) is an institution with a predominantly African-American student body. Located on the south-side of Chicago, CSU serves the highest proportion of black students of all public universities in the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa-Wisconsin contiguous four-state region and it is the largest producer of black baccalaureate degree recipients. The CSU MBRS SCORE Program is a response to the NIH initiative to improve significantly the research capabilities of minority and minority-serving institutions as a means to address the need to increase the numbers of minority students entering doctoral programs in the biomedical sciences. The quantitative goals of the CSU MBRS SCORE Program are (i) to increase the number of junior faculty engaged in biomedical research, and (ii) to increase the number of biomedical research publications from CSU teaching faculty. The qualitative goal of the Program is to create a research environment at CSU that stimulates faculty to engage in discovery research and which encourages students to point their career goals to leadership positions in biomedical research. [unreadable] [unreadable] The CSU Program organizes its activities around faculty-led research projects in biology and chemistry. The 2003-7 Competing Continuation application (submitted June 2002) included three projects which formed the basis of the 1999-2003 SCORE funding period and three from previously unfunded junior faculty. Of these, two of the previously-funded faculty are supported in the current (2003-7) SCORE Program (Drs. Leitzel and Swier) but those of Dr. Erhart and the junior faculty (Drs Baker, Gana and Shelby) were not. This Supplemental Application contains revised subprojects from the unsuccessful applicants, new subprojects from four additional junior faculty, and a revised Program section. [unreadable] [unreadable]